A Corpus-based Study On The Features Of Stance Adverbs Used By Chinese College EFL Learners

English stance adverbs play an important role in the daily communication to express the subjective attitudes of the speaker or writer and comment on the content of a particular part of a sentence or on the whole sentence.Based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and the native speaker corpus (BROWN), and with the help of WordSmith Tools 3.0, the present study investigates the features of the common English stance adverbs used by Chinese college EFL learners from the perspectives of overall frequencies and positions in the sentence. Finally, the analysis of the findings is carried out.The results display that Chinese college EFL learners differ a lot from native speakers in the use of English stance adverbs in terms of overall frequencies and positions in the sentence. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) Generally, Chinese college EFL learners have a tendency to underuse stance adverbs, while there are still some they highly rely on and overuse. (2) As far as the positions are concerned, it is concluded that Chinese college EFL learners put stance adverbs in the initial position in most cases, whereas native speakers prefer the medial position. In addition, native speakers use stance adverbs more freely in the initial medial and initial end positions, which are not common in the writings of Chinese college EFL learners. The possible reasons underlying such features can be the influence or transfer of first language, unfamiliarity with certain stance adverbs, colloquial tendency in written English and inadequate input.The present study will provide instructive information for the vocabulary teaching in college, especially the teaching of English stance adverbs.